Job Search C/O 2012

[nyanko]

OK, I have an idea. I am fairly familiar with the original survey. I'll make a survey form in googledocs that asks follow up questions. Answers dump straight into a spreadsheet for analysis.
Let's face it- nobody else is going to do it. Why shouldn't we?

How can we get the survey to 2011 grads?

Actually, UCDavis has started to do 1 year, 5 year and 10 year follow-up surveys, beginning in 2010 with the class of 2009. They have pretty bad response rates as far as I can tell. Maybe 25-35% of the alum they send it to respond.

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[justavet]

Kudos to UCDavis. Was it distributed in convenient formats via multiple channels?

Do you know how the university intends to share the info?
Will the actual data be made public, in real time, with transparent statistics?

We cannot continue to run a profession on anecdotes. We need data.
We need that data to be widely and quickly available so we can apply these great brains and mad skillz of ours to figuring out what each one of us needs in order to make of ourselves a successful, contributing member of the profession.

My thought was post the survey to all the c/o class fo 2011 threads, post it here, post it on VIN, see if we can get everybody to post it on their facebook page, send it out on their twitter feed, post a link to it on their homepage, post a blog entry about it if they have a blog. Send it viral.

More than happy to ask AVMA and schools to participate but not sure what sort of response it'd get. I would expect it would go over better at schools if the recent grads and/or current students and interns were the ones asking the school to support its distribution. Any school that did would receive access to all their alumni's aggregated data.

 

[quantized]

OK, I have an idea. I am fairly familiar with the original survey. I'll make a survey form in googledocs that asks follow up questions. Answers dump straight into a spreadsheet for analysis.
Let's face it- nobody else is going to do it. Why shouldn't we?

How can we get the survey to 2011 grads?

Paul Pion was trying to put something like that together. You can probably contact him and tell him you are interested in contributing.

 

[nyanko]

Kudos to UCDavis. Was it distributed in convenient formats via multiple channels?

Distributed via email.

Do you know how the university intends to share the info?
Will the actual data be made public, in real time, with transparent statistics?

No idea - the aggregate data from each year's surveys are currently available to current students and (I suspect) others who can access the SVM's intranet portal. No stats, just the raw numbers.

We cannot continue to run a profession on anecdotes. We need data.
We need that data to be widely and quickly available so we can apply these great brains and mad skillz of ours to figuring out what each one of us needs in order to make of ourselves a successful, contributing member of the profession.

My thought was post the survey to all the c/o class fo 2011 threads, post it here, post it on VIN, see if we can get everybody to post it on their facebook page, send it out on their twitter feed, post a link to it on their homepage, post a blog entry about it if they have a blog. Send it viral.

I definitely see your point with needing more data. That being said, SDN users tend to kind of drop off of here somewhere between 1st and 3rd year of vet school, so I don't think this is that great of a place to solicit follow-up responses. Not to mention that anyone can join here so it'd be really hard to prove that people responding were actually veterinarians/recent graduates. You'd really need to have some way of verification if you were to put it out there on FB/Twitter/SDN/etc.

 

[justavet]

Paul and I have spoken. He has established the VIN Foundation, which has moved very slowly up to this point, and is very closely controlled yet not particularly driven. VIN as a company is rapidly expanding in a turbulent market, and that has to come first.

I don't mind contributing to Paul's efforts...but over the past year that has meant contributing my effort to Paul/VIN Foundation on what he/they think is important, on their schedule. Of course Same as AVMA, and all the other big organizations that have their own agendas and vested interests. They want to direct their resources towards collecting and controlling data in ways that best serve their particular constituency.

Nothing wrong with that. Being a member of those constituencies, I appreciate it.
But I don't see it getting THIS job done.
Not even on their radar.

 

[justavet]

Yeah, Nyanko, verification is going to be in issue regardless. The questionnaire would pretty much have to include some sort of individually identifying piece of information- which could then be keyed in and stripped out to anonymize the data after verification. Or ask for permission to verify with the school, that'd work.

 

[justavet]

No idea - the aggregate data from each year's surveys are currently available to current students and (I suspect) others who can access the SVM's intranet portal. No stats, just the raw numbers.

Any chance you can copy and share the data?

 

[Angelus9]

The mean starting salary seemed really high, then I noticed that only half of the responders supplied salary data. I'm wondering if those who got high-paying jobs listed their salaries, and those who took very low paying jobs didn't. Just a thought, as the couple veterinarians I know who started in the work force this year accepted salaries at $40,000.

 

[rugbychick16]

The mean starting salary seemed really high, then I noticed that only half of the responders supplied salary data. I'm wondering if those who got high-paying jobs listed their salaries, and those who took very low paying jobs didn't. Just a thought, as the couple veterinarians I know who started in the work force this year accepted salaries at $40,000.

I was wondering that too. I get $57,500 (large/mixed animal practice, rural area). I know someone starting in small animal in an urban area is going to command a higher salary than me, but that average still seemed awfully high, especially when I know several classmates making a lot less than me.

 

[justavet]

Again, this is why we need to have real world, real time data, that is widely available in a timely fashion.
Margins are too thin for us to rely on outdated anecdotes.
I'm working on a survey.

 

[dyachei]

Again, this is why we need to have real world, real time data, that is widely available in a timely fashion.
Margins are too thin for us to rely on outdated anecdotes.
I'm working on a survey.

Let me know if you need any help with anything.

 

[Minnerbelle]

For those of you who have already graduated c/o 2011 or c/o 2012, i'm assuming you had class facebook pages where most if not all of your classmates were members. Do you and your classmates still frequent those, or are they dead now that you're no longer in school? Would that be a possible venue to advertise the surveys?

If it is, I bet we could have a bunch of current sdn'ers look up and try to find the pages for those and send links to justavet who can keep track of which pages/schools she's reached out to. And when making the posting for the survey, I think if it was made clear that the intention is for EVERYONE to participate and that anyone who sees the message should reach out to anyone who might not have seen it, there might be a better response rate. Who knows, maybe there would be someone in each class who could take initiative and keep track of their class and who has responded. That way, all justavet (i'm assuming, but it could be any one central person) has to do is find one person in charge of each vet school that will report back to her. It would be very difficult for justavet to roll-call each member of every class, but a former class officer or any classmate could relatively easily get a list of all their classmates, contact them via email/fb and verify that the survey was taken (and pester them until it's done). That way, we also don't run into the problem of needing to verify that survey respondents are indeed vet school grads of 2011 or 2012 at X school. Dunno how successful it would be, but I think it might be better than a shot in the dark on an anonymous site that not everyone frequents.

 

[justavet]

@Dyachei, thanks. I will take you up on that.

Minnerbelle, absolutely connectivity is key. I had thought about facebook- hadn't thought of the class pages, that is BRiLLIANT. Basically if we can post it to all the class facebook pages, get vets (someobdy hired those 527 that got jobs!) and veterinary sites (local VMAs?) and schools (where the 727 interns are working) to post it, get 2011 and 2012 grads to pick it up and send it out via fb and twitter, it'd be well on its way to being viral within the community of about 4000 people we are trying to reach.

So if SDNers could put together a list of class of 2011 facebook pages, that'd be a great start.

Any 2011 grads out there, please contact me. I am happy to have you volunteer to whatever extent you are willing and able, be it sending me your email so I can send you the survey or sending me a list of your skills, abilities and ideas.
Anyone who knows a 2011 grad, please send them my contact info, it's in my profile.


Anybody know anything about survey design or database administration?

 

[justavet]

@rugbychick16, @angelus9,

Yeah, the salary figures strike a lot of people as unrealistic. Maybe the sheer number of people working in metro areas raise the number. We just don't know.

But we can know.

Anyone interested in developing or distributing the survey, PM me to take a look at it.

 

[couldabeenadoc]

"Veterinarian ranks third, with a median salary of $82,000, a 2011 unemployment rate of just 0.6% and an expected growth rate of 36%. Vets often prefer animals to humans.The job gives them a chance to interact with their favorite creatures, and in many cases, cure animals of disease. But vets spend much of the day on their feet, sometimes have to work outside in bad weather and must absorb the stress that comes with the illness and death of beloved animals, which keeps the job from making the top of the list."

http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2012/09/27/the-most-underrated-jobs-2012/

The first sentence would indicate that it's a great time to be a newly graduated Veterinarian, but after reading through this thread I'm having a hard time believing those numbers.

This is another page loaded with employment data for veterinarians.
http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes291131.htm

 

[justavet]

BLS is BS.

Here's a preview of the lead study from the latest JAVMA:

Employment of female and male graduates of US veterinary medical colleges, 2012
In a survey of veterinary medical students expected to graduate in spring 2012, mean starting salary was $69,405 for male respondents who had accepted a full-time position (excluding salaries for positions in advanced education) and $63,844 for female respondents. Mean educational debt was $129,439 for male respondents and $137,079 for female respondents.

How, zackly, is the mean debt for both men and women lower than the mean debt for all grads together reported last month? WE NEED BETTER NUMBERS!!!!!

 

[NStarz]

Justavet, OSU just sent us a survey they did for recent grads (2012). They conducted it recently (past couple of months) so the results are more accurate. PM me if you would like a copy (don't want to post it on here). I will say that most of the 2012 grads at OSU found jobs.

 

[justavet]

That'd be great, thanks
Yes, all the schools are required to conduct employment surveys. It's in the accreditation standard that was revised last year. There's been a big push to assess outcomes in higher education recently. *snort* wonder why?